BOSTON – We will spend a lot of time revisiting the past with Larry Brown, because the stories are so irresistible, because the tales tell you all about how Brown has gotten where he is and achieved what he has.

Even yesterday, the new coach of the Knicks was delighted to take a handful of visitors back to Riis Park in Rockaway and Central School in Long Beach, all the places where he learned the game as a kid.

He took all of us back there, back to 1953, when pros like Larry Costello and Danny Finn and, of course, Red Holzman, would throw the 13-year-old kid a few bucks to get beer and sandwiches in between games, where they’d give him an accelerated education whenever he’d scratch his way into a pick-up game.

“And if you took a bad shot late in a game,” he said with a laugh, “you were in a lot of trouble. They let you know about it.”

Yes, Larry Brown’s yesterdays are a splendid New York tale, told across more than half-century of a peripatetic basketball life. And they will all be perfectly useless beginning tonight, just past 7:30 at the T.D. Banknorth Garden. The Knicks aren’t paying him $9 million a year to be some kind of vaudeville act with a clipboard and a whistle.

He is here because when you hire a coach with this kind of resume, with this kind of reputation, then you aren’t exactly hiring on spec. Brown has won in Carolina, in Denver, in Westwood, Calif., and in New Jersey. He has won in Lawrence, Kan., and in San Antonio and in Los Angeles and in Indiana. He has won in Philly. He has won in Detroit.

“I’m here because I think we can do some pretty special things here,” Brown said.

It doesn’t take much to pull him out of 1953. It doesn’t take much to get him talking about the task at hand, which is one of the reasons the task at hand suddenly seems a whole lot more possible than it did six months ago.

When a team acquires a great player, that generates its own kind of other-worldly buzz. If the Knicks ever find a way to sign LeBron James, for instance, the city will stand still for days, and the Garden will be electric whenever he has the ball, and no coach can ever match those spasms of magic.

But he sure can provide something else. A great coach produces hope, and he generates optimism, and he makes you believe that anything is possible. Especially in those hours before his first game. That’s when a coach can weave his greatest magic.

“I want the people of New York to believe that we can do anything, and that means win the NBA championship,” is what Pat Riley said on the morning of his first game as the Knicks’ coach, Nov. 1, 1991, at the old Orlando Arena. The Knicks would lose that night. They would lose the next night. They wouldn’t win until their home opener almost a week later. Didn’t matter. If Riley said it, the people would believe it.

“If you don’t think you can get to the mountaintop, then why are you even trying?” is what Bill Parcells said on the evening of his first game as the Jets’ coach, Aug. 31, 1997, inside the old Seattle Kingdome. The Jets, who won one game the year before, had just flattened the Seahawks, 41-3. Nobody thought the coach was crazy. If Parcells said it, the people would believe it.

It doesn’t matter, really, that neither Riley nor Parcells ever did deliver a championship. The people who care about their teams believed they did. And really, what else do you want if you are a Knicks fan now? The Knicks haven’t been as pathetic as the pre-Parcells Jets were. But the Garden hasn’t been near what it should be in far too long.

Larry Brown, the kid who used his GO card to gain access to the Garden back in the day, is a nice story. Larry Brown, the coach who will make the Knicks relevant, is a far better one.

e-mail: michael.vaccaro@nypost.com

NEW BEGINNINGS

In 27 different professional coaching stints, Larry Brown has experienced mostly good results. Here’s a look at his best and worst starts as coach for various teams: